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The History of Russian Railways

If Russia had no trains, what would Tolstoy have done with Anna Karenina? How would Lenin have returned to Russia in April 1917, sent back, as Churchill said, in ‘a sealed train like a plague bacillus’? On October 30 Russia celebrates the 170th anniversary of the opening of the first public railway. Tsar Nicholas I was certainly looking after number one, when he decided its location – he just wanted a quicker journey from the city of St. Petersburg  to the Pushkin Palace in Tsarskoe Selo! 

By Isabel Stone

Russia without Trains? Ludicrous!
Before railways existed, people relied on an unreliable river and canal system; the water was frozen and impassable for about five months of the year, and the journey for example from Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea to St. Petersburg often took two years to complete! The road system was even worse. In 1834 the country’s first hard-surface road, the Moscow - St. Petersburg highway was completed, but even then the journey took 10 days! 

Royal Rails
In 1835, Franz von Gerstner, an Austrian rail engineer with Pushkin-esque mutton chop sideburns, was enlisted to provide Russia with a railway system. Work began in March 1836 and in November, the Tsar and his family were among the lucky passengers to be pulled on an exciting voyage up and down the five kilometres of completed track. On October 30 1837, Gerstner himself hopped in front of the steering wheel to drive the 26 km trip, with a huge audience of ministers and officials. Work on other lines began soon after this triumph; the 647 km  Moscow-St.Petersburg line (allegedly designed by Nicholas I by drawing a line on a map between the two cities using a straight-edge and a pencil) was completed in 1851 – the journey took 22 hours. From 1866-1899 the railway network increased from 5000 km to 53,200 km.  

The Big Slog
In 1891, railway engineers braced themselves for the biggest challenge out there – the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It took 25 years to build and is the third longest continuous railway in the world – it measures 9,288 kilometres, spans eight time zones and the journey is a week long! The route starts at the Moskovksy Vokzal in St. Petersburg, and stops include Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, terminating in Vladivostok. The train stops for 20-30 minutes every 3-4 hours; everybody can get out of the train and have a stroll along the platform, where they will be harassed by swarms of babushkas selling pickled vegetables, pies and beer. People say that the smoked fish on sale at the Lake Baikal stops is the best snack you will find all week! Beware of the fierce supervisor, or provodnits(a) that manages each carriage with an iron fist. 

Onwards and Upwards
Ever since 1837, railway development has been a major focus in Russia, and in 1970 Soviet engineers got a little ahead of themselves with a wacky futuristic ‘jet train’ prototype! It reached speeds of 290 km/h in the tests, but sadly this ridiculous-looking machine made it no further and the fragments now lie rusting away in an old factory. Today Russia contains over 85 thousand kilometres of railway, and the  Moscow-St. Petersburg journey takes only 4 ½ hours in the Air-200 train. On September 4, 2007 Putin met with Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways, to discuss a 13 trillion ruble program, which will run until 2030 and involves the construction of 30,000 km of new tracks around the country.

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